


New Roads

by Tarlan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: mcsheplets, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-21
Updated: 2011-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-15 20:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following his break-up with Jennifer, Rodney discovers that, sometimes, the end of one road is just the start of another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Roads

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's mcsheplets prompt #69 Awkward

"Um. Errh. Well. This is awkward," Rodney stated softly, his cheeks feeling the heat of embarrassment. He averted his eyes as Jennifer re-hooked her bra and pulled on a top. "I'll just..." He pointed to the door and walked away, picking up the pace as soon as he entered the corridor.

"Rodney!"

His steps faltered and even though half of him was screaming to keep on walking and not look back, he simply couldn't do it. Instead he waited for her to catch up to him. Her small hand on his forearm made him flinch, only now realizing how much it had affected him to walk in and see her with someone else. She moved around him until they were facing each other.

"Rodney."

"No. No. It's fine. I'm...fine. I just didn't think. I thought..."

What had he thought though? Last night she had told him that she was breaking up with him, that she had met someone else who made her feel...happy. It had come as a shock because he hadn't realized that she was unhappy, with him. He thought they were getting along great. Certainly the sex could have been better but he was a busy man and sometimes he was simply too tired to get it up, even for her. She had to understand that. She was a doctor after all and had told him that it was just tiredness and not some underlying medical condition. He thought she understood that his work had to come first, that people were relying on him to keep them safe, even here in San Francisco.

He thought she understood.

She grabbed his hands and looked him in the eyes. "Rodney, I'm so sorry. I thought you understood."

He smiled tightly and pulled his hands away gently. He had tried so hard to be a better person for her, to be the person she wanted him to be. Someone...nicer. Less judgmental and arrogant. Less inclined to shout and call people imbeciles, but sometimes he plain forgot, too caught up in the moment to notice she was standing in the same room, or had a friendship with whatever hapless person had crossed his path. And on those times when he did bite back on the sarcasm, he felt as if his head was going to explode and he spent the next few hours with the headache from hell unless John was around. On those occasions, he'd ranted in private instead, pacing up and down John's quarters, probably looking like a raving lunatic with his hands flailing and his teeth grinding while John just laid back on his bed, offering the occasional word of condolence while he carried on reading Superhero comics or Golf Weekly or even that damned novel that he'd brought with him to Atlantis five years earlier. Honestly, did he read just one page a week? How could someone have the same bedside novel for five years and still be less than half the way through?

"Rodney." Her soft voice implored at him, and he sighed.

"I really tried."

"I know, and I'm so sorry it didn't work out between us."

Rodney nodded, feeling awkward again and seeing that same strain of awkwardness in her expression too. He dredged up a smile because he didn't hate her. He couldn't hate her because she had done nothing to deserve that. It simply wasn't to be. She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek and he didn't look around when she went back to her room and to the new man in her life. With his brain working on autopilot, it wasn't until he reached John's door that he realized where his feet had taken him. Hesitating for a moment, he passed his hand over the chime and the door slid open immediately.

John was sitting up on his bed, oiling the wheels on his skate board but he put it down on the floor and stood up the moment he saw Rodney's face.

"Hey, what's up, buddy?"

"I've broken up with Jennifer."

John gave a half-pained expression but they both knew how well they handled relationship talks. Rodney always said too much and John too little.

"I'm sorry," John murmured, and Rodney knew the sympathy was mostly genuine. He knew John had his reservations about Jennifer, though he'd never aired them outright, and who could blame him when Rodney was always using him as a sounding board to avoid confrontations with Jennifer. He must have heard Rodney's side of every argument that he'd had with Jennifer, every supposed slight of his manhood and his character.

Rodney slumped onto John's bed, and was surprised when John shoved a cold beer into his hands. He grimaced at the ideal of drowning his sorrows in alcohol like some tragic figure in a television show but, strangely, he did feel a little better after a couple of swallows. John didn't say a word, which was good because they both knew how bad he was at consoling others through relationship talks.

"You know, the worse thing is I really don't miss her." He shook his head, wondering why he felt so lightheaded when he'd only had...four cans? When did he drink the other three?

"Would you miss me?"

"Are you drunk, Sheppard?" he sighed. "You. You, I won't miss... because YOU," he stabbed John awkwardly in the chest with his can, sloshing beer, "are not going anywhere."

"I can go...places."

"Without me? Not likely. I was going to put in my reshig--reshina--quit Area 52 and demand to be on your team...again." He remembered how lonely he had felt without John and the others when the Ancients forced them to leave Atlantis. The SGC had locked him away in that huge laboratory while John was going off-world, fighting the Ori without him to watch his back. He had planned to have a word with John over that weekend, after the meal with Carson and Elizabeth, to see how he could get transferred to Cheyenne Mountain.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! Can't trust you to go....anywhere," he waved his hand expansively and beer sloshed over his hand. "Am I drunk?"

John grimaced. "Pretty much. In fact, I didn't realize you were such a lightweight these days. I'm cutting you off."

"Oh. I'm feeling a little..." He slipped sideways, and that was the last thing he could recall.

When he woke up hours later, he had the worst hangover ever, courtesy of drinking strong, cheap beer--and lots of it. He groaned and cursed as he tried to untangle himself, only then realizing that he was naked beneath the bed sheets. He blinked furiously as he tried to work out where he was, already aware that he wasn't in his own quarters. Johnny Cash staring down at him was a huge giveaway, and he relaxed back in relief. For one awful moment he thought he might have taken up the offer of comfort from some besotted scientist.

The room was empty but Rodney found a glass of water and some Tylenol on the beside table, obviously meant for him. He took the tablets gratefully, downing the whole glass. Dragging the sheet around himself, he stumbled out of bed and went hunting for his clothes but they were nowhere to be seen. He staggered into the bathroom but it was empty except for a spare towel and shaving kit laid out, obviously for his use. The thought of a hot shower overcame any awkwardness and he sighed in relief as the Atlantis shower massaged his sore muscles and eased away some of the aches. By the time he climbed out, he felt better than he had in days. He wandered out of the bathroom, clad only in the towel around his waist while briskly scrubbing his hair dry with another, and froze when he found John sitting on the bed waiting for him. The shock was only momentary as the aroma of fresh coffee and some of those amazing croissants that he loved filled the air. Stomach rumbling in anticipation, he dropped down next to the tray and grabbed the coffee with one hand and a croissant with the other, and not even the slight queasiness in his stomach stopped him from taking a huge bite. Beside him, John shook his head indulgently as he ate his own breakfast far more sedately.

When he reached for the third croissant, he ignored John's raised eyebrow. Swallowing hard, Rodney asked the big question.

"Why am I naked?"

John's lips twitched. "Because you spilled my beer all over yourself."

Rodney frowned because he really didn't remember much about last evening. "I did?"

"And all over my bed."

Horrified, Rodney looked back at the bed but it seemed clean and dry, which probably didn't account for much, because if Sheppard had to strip him naked then he probably stripped the bed too.

"I'm..." Sorry seemed too inadequate. "Thank you."

"Hey. That's what friends are for."

"Oh god I hope not."

John snorted and snatched up his coffee before Rodney could grab it for a second cup. "Mine. You want more then go get it." He indicated towards the coffee pot in the corner of his room. Rodney groaned at the thought but shuffled over to the pot to refill his mug.

"Anyway. Clothes?" He asked.

John looked away, one hand rubbing the back of his neck in that all-too familiar way for when he had something difficult to explain. Rodney looked at him in confusion before narrowing his eyes. He sank back onto the bed next to John but John jumped to his feet and took a few paces.

"You do have my clothes."

John gave him a disdainful look before sighing. "Look. Last night you said some things."

Rodney felt a horrible sinking feeling that had nothing to do with his hangover or with the food that now sat heavy in his stomach. Aware that the best defense was a good offense, he pulled back his shoulders and gave a disdainful snort.

"I say a lot of things to a lot of people. I'm sure it's nothing they haven't heard before, and probably deserve."

"You said you loved me."

"I said...?" He cleared his throat. "Yes, well. As a friend...loves another friend."

John smiled sadly, recognizing his own words thrown back at him. He moved back and sank down next to Rodney on the bed. "It's not the first time you've said those words, but I couldn't do anything about it last time."

"Last time?" he asked feebly. His mind started twisting through past memories, trying to pinpoint exactly when he had slipped and proclaimed his love to John, and then forgotten. The press of dry lips against his own was sudden and far too short, leaving his lips tingling and his mind reeling. "I... Obviously that was too short a duration to adequately assess--"

John kissed him again, deeper and longer this time, and Rodney found his head reeling again but he knew it had nothing to do with the hangover. Instead, it had everything to do with his best friend of five years--a man he had loved from afar but truly believed was straight and, therefore, unobtainable--kissing him.

"Oh." His brain seemed to have frozen for a moment. "Wait. Wait. Wait. You said couldn't? And now you can? Is it Jennifer? Is she the reason why you can suddenly--"

"No. But certain things have changed since we got back to Earth."

Confused, Rodney tried to recall anything among all the hundreds, perhaps thousands of emails he had received since they arrived in San Francisco. Back in Pegasus, they were limited by the number of scientists who were willing to work on the front line, and by the capacity of the Daedalus. Here on Earth, every scientist with SGC clearance wanted to be on Atlantis, and Rodney was caught trying to coordinate all the different disciplines. Yet nothing struck him as pertinent to this new state of affairs, except...

"DADT was repealed." He looked to John for confirmation and saw him nod.

"And I'm no longer your team leader." John added quietly because his promotion to full bird came with a price tag. They expected him to command from Atlantis and leave junior officers to go out in the field. On Atlantis he and Rodney were equals in rank, one commanding the military and the other presiding over the scientists. It was only while working as a team off-world that Rodney deferred to John, and despite the non-regulation haircut and the way John slouched around, he really was a stickler for the Fraternization rules that applied even to civilian contractors such as himself.

"If Jennifer hadn't broken up with me?"

John looked away guiltily and, all of a sudden, Rodney was furious because he knew the answer to that question--John would have said nothing. He would have smiled politely and been the best man at Rodney's wedding to Jennifer, never even hinting that it could have been far different for both of them, that they could have been together. It made him feel sick inside to realize that he would have married Jennifer and he would have tried to make them both happy and would have probably failed miserably in the end because sometimes love on its own wasn't enough.

What he had with John went beyond love. Perhaps Rodney didn't know all the tiny details of John's past--the number of ex-wives, his family's fortune, the reason for his black mark, and the terrible things he had seen and done in the name of his country--but he knew the man inside. He knew what John loved and hated, what made him honk like a deranged donkey and what made him tighten his lips in anger or refusal. He knew how far John would go to save a friend, and how much it meant to him to know that others would go just as far to save him. Like Jennifer, John pulled him up when he was being particularly obnoxious but, unlike her, he hadn't turned reforming Rodney's character into a personal crusade. Rodney had never been afraid to be himself around John. He had never had to censor his words or feelings--except for those few awkward weeks after the Doranda disaster when their friendship had faltered for a while.

He opened his mouth to let John Sheppard have a piece of his mind but snapped it shut just as quickly.

"You idiot," he murmured, and to soothe the sting of his words he caught John's face in his hands and kissed him deeply, pouring all his hopes and dreams into that single kiss--and finally relaxing when John offered him his own hopes and dreams in return.

END


End file.
